Navigating the Storm: Digital Piracy and the Publishing Industry

In an era dominated by technology, the publishing industry has undergone a significant transformation with the advent of digital content. However, this transition has not been without its challenges, chief among them being the proliferating issue of digital piracy. From e-book sharing platforms to unauthorized downloads, the publishing industry faces a myriad of threats that jeopardize its economic sustainability and the livelihoods of authors. The multifaceted landscape of digital piracy requires an examination of its various forms and the impact it has on the publishing industry. Moreover, the exploration of the strategies employed by publishers and authors to combat piracy and safeguard their digital content.

Types of Digital Piracy

Interpol defines digital piracy as, “the illegal copying or distribution of copyrighted material via the Internet.” This action harmfully disturbs the creative productions, to include film, television, publishing, music, and some gaming. Explicitly, digital piracy within the publishing industry manifests in different forms, each posing unique challenges to content creators and distributors. One prevalent form is e-book sharing, where users upload and share digital copies of books on various online platforms. These platforms, often disguised as legitimate book-sharing communities, enable users to access copyrighted material without the legal and proper authorizations. Another form of piracy is the unauthorized distribution of digital copies through illegal download websites, where users can obtain books without compensating the authors or publishers. These illegal download sites often operate in the shadows of the internet, making it challenging for authorities to track and shut them down.

Impact on Digital Publishing

The impact of digital piracy on the publishing industry is widespread, affecting both reputable publishing houses and emerging authors. One of the primary consequences is the loss of revenue. As pirated copies circulate freely on the internet, potential buyers opt for the free versions, leading to a decline in legitimate sales. This loss of revenue not only affects the publishers but also has a direct impact on the livelihoods of authors who rely on book sales for their income. Additionally, digital piracy undermines the incentive for authors to produce high-quality content, as the lack of financial reward and stolen recognition diminishes the motivation to invest time and effort into producing compelling works.

Strategies to Combat Digital Piracy

Publishers and authors have recognized the urgent need to address digital piracy and have implemented various strategies to protect their intellectual property. One of the most common approaches is the use of digital rights management (DRM) technologies. The concept of DRM has historical roots in efforts to protect software, but its application expanded as digital media, such as music, movies, and e-books, became prevalent. In the context of digital media, the development of DRM systems gained momentum in the late 1990s and early 2000s. DRM involves embedding encryption into digital files, preventing unauthorized access and distribution. While DRM has been effective in some cases, it is not foolproof, and determined pirates often find ways to circumvent these protections. Moreover, DRM has faced criticism for potentially limiting the rights of legitimate users, as it can restrict their ability to share or transfer digital content across devices.

Another strategy is the enforcement of legal actions against piracy offenders. Publishers and authors have been increasingly proactive in pursuing legal recourse against those who engage in unauthorized distribution of their digital content. For instance, major publishing houses such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and others have, at times, joined forces to file lawsuits against websites or individuals distributing copyrighted eBooks without permission. These legal actions typically aim to shut down the infringing websites and seek damages for the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material. High-profile cases have resulted in the shutdown of major piracy websites, sending a strong message about the consequences of engaging in such activities. However, legal action comes with its challenges, including jurisdictional issues and the anonymity afforded by the vastness of the internet.

Collaboration and education are also integral components of the fight against digital piracy. Publishers and authors are actively engaging with technology companies, internet service providers, and law enforcement agencies to establish collaborative efforts to curb piracy. One notable example of collaboration and education initiatives aimed at preventing piracy is the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE). ACE is a global coalition of leading content creators and distributors that includes major film studios, television networks, and streaming services. The primary goal of ACE is to combat online piracy and protect the rights of its members’ intellectual property. Additionally, educating the public about the impact of piracy on the publishing industry and the livelihoods of authors can contribute to changing consumer behavior. Initiatives such as anti-piracy campaigns and public awareness programs aim to foster a sense of responsibility among users and encourage them to choose legal alternatives.

The Sum Total

Digital piracy poses a formidable challenge to the publishing industry, threatening the economic sustainability of publishers and the livelihoods of authors. The various forms of piracy, from e-book sharing to illegal downloads, require a multi-faceted approach to combat this pervasive issue. Publishers and authors are employing strategies such as DRM technologies, legal action, collaboration, and education to protect their digital content and mitigate the impact of piracy. As the publishing industry continues to evolve in the digital age, finding effective and ethical solutions to address digital piracy remains imperative for the continued growth and innovation of the industry. Through a combination of technological advancements, legal measures, and public awareness, the publishing industry can navigate the storm of digital piracy and secure a sustainable future for content creators and distributors alike.

From Fanfiction to Film: How Wattpad is Ushering in A New Age of Writing

Wattpad is an online community of authors and readers that hosts stories from typically unpublished authors. The site is unique in combining social media and a reading platform, which allows readers to interact with the books and the author. Wattpad was founded in 2006 by Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen as an e-reading platform where “readers could download an app to read and chat about fiction shared by professional and aspiring writers from around the world.” According to Lau, being mobile was the top priority. This mobility allowed for interaction on the site to skyrocket. Wattpad appeals to up-and-coming writers who wanted to distribute their work without going through a publishing process.

Writers typically release the book a chapter at a time and readers can make in-line comments on stories, allowing the writer to adjust the book to the reader’s preferences. Wattpad readers are primarily young people who were drawn to the appeal of free books written by their peers instead of older, more established authors. Many of these young authors became success stories through the constructive criticism and praise they received from their fans.

Anna Todd and Happily Ever After

Wattpad has been a powerhouse for undiscovered authors in the past few years. Anna Todd’s After began as a Harry Styles fanfiction in 2013. Written under the name @imaginator1D, After became an almost overnight success, with the fanbase reaching the hundreds of thousands. Todd wrote the majority of After on her phone, with no outlining or proofreading before she uploaded the chapter to Wattpad. While some may dislike the lack of outline, Todd and her fans equally enjoyed the “social writing” model. Todd would listen to her fans’ feedback and adjust the story to their preferences in real time. Not only did Todd’s fanbase grow, but the relationship between the fan and the author grew as well. Readers felt like they had a say in the story, which increased their loyalty to the author, as well as their willingness to offer financial support.

With the help of Wattpad, Anna Todd received a book deal with Simon and Schuster in 2014, just one year after she published her first chapter on Wattpad. After was also granted a movie in 2019, with three sequels to follow. Todd’s story is a testament to the power that her fans and Wattpad hold. The first movie currently holds an 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, though fans give it a significantly better rating of 66%.

Wattpad to Movie Pipeline

Though Todd’s story is one of the most notable, it is far from the only success story that has come from Wattpad. At seventeen, Beth Reekles became the youngest Wattpad writer to score a book deal for her story, The Kissing Booth. Reekle later went on to earn a movie deal with Netflix, though that movie also did poorly on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite the abysmal critic reviews, The Kissing Booth garnered immense fan support. According to Sara Perez, this disconnect is due to the “built in audience” of Wattpad users.

Readers don’t just read and watch these stories, they create them. Wattpad utilizes the fan base when adapting stories for film. In an article for Quartz, Adam Epstein discusses Wattpad’s story-to-film process. The fans are integral to the adaptation process, with some “superfans” gaining access to the script to provide feedback before the film hits the box office. This process seems to work well. Epstein writes,

Most books come with a built-in audience, but this one comes with a built-in audience that’s also invested in the development process itself. It not only makes them more inclined to watch the show when it comes out, but leads them to become evangelists for the project on social media, which helps build buzz.
Adam Epstein, Quartz

Wattpad is unique in that its user base not only reads and shapes the stories on its platform, but also the way the stories transition off the platform.

Story DNA

According to Aron Levitz, the fans’ engagement is part of the “microtrend,” which allows Wattpad to know what will sell based on the size of the fanbase and reader engagement. Macrotrends are made possible by Story DNA. Story DNA is Wattpad’s deep-learning AI technology, which, according to Ashleigh Gardener, “deconstructs stories into their elemental features, such as sentence structure, word use, and grammar,” This gives Wattpad further insight into what makes a story popular outside of comments, likes, and shares. As a result, up-and-coming stories are given a greater chance at being discovered and transitioning off of Wattpad. The development of this technology is leading to a future of reading that is not just consumed by the reader but also formed by them.

Wattpad is unique in the fact that it is constantly reinventing itself to the benefit of its writers and readers. Wattpad has adapted from merely presenting stories to publishing them and promoting them outside of the digital platform. Wattpad not only publishes for fans but with the fans. The future of reading is driven by the reader, not the author or publisher.

Success in Serialization

Digital publishing has re-envisioned many of today’s traditional publishing methods, like the serial novel. While serial fiction is a piece of literature released through installments like it is now. Historically, each installment contained its own story loosely connected to an overarching narrative and popularized by The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. Outside of Dicken’s writing style and themes, its popularity came from its accessibility. Besides being inexpensive like the traditional publishing texts, the modern serialized story is composed of episodes, or mini-chapters, that actively support a more significant narrative than individual shorts. Therefore, making it vastly different from its predecessor.

As digital publishing grows, many new outlets for serialized fiction develop, allowing more authors to thrive. The popularity of the modern serialized novel could arguably be traced back to websites like Wattpad, a highly interactive platform for digital publishing. Websites like these restructured how a community can create readership and reader retention, especially with the growth of the author’s note, and allow authors like Pepper Pace on Kindle Vella to become successful.

Kindle Vella

Kindle is not a new market in the field of digital publishing or self-publishing. However, Kindle Vella relatively is. While it did a soft launch in 2021, its official launch in 2022 was successful, albeit through marketing and a free set of tokens for new readers. Its success was thanks to the soft launch—ultimately benefiting many authors.

Reader Engagement

Kindle Vella is user-friendly and allows the reader to be as interactive as the author and platform allow. At the end of each episode, readers can like the episode, follow the story, or continue reading. Polls can even be done if the author wills it. Thus, building a community and allowing personability to negate pitfalls that can be faced in choosing to publish serialized novels, like upset readers from infrequent or inconsistent updates, grammatical errors, or what appears to be filler content that doesn’t move the story forward. Therefore, implying that reader engagement is the sole reason for success on Kindle Vella, as the top five promoted stories are stories that are “favorited” by the audience.

The Serialized Cost

As Kindle Vella is a self-publishing platform for serialized novels, authors have complete control over their success. No contracts hold the author to a particular word count, specific release dates, or approved plot arches. As a result, an author, in theory, can actively work on uncompleted stories like they could on platforms such as Wattpad or Inkitt. Except with compensation and, in turn, more options for revenue later as many outlets have strict guidelines for works that were previously available for free.

However, Kindle Vella charges approximately “one token per 100 words,” making word count crucial for pantsers—writers who don’t plot, plan, their novels—on the platform. Other platforms are successful due to regular updates and consistent costs per episode. Not ensuring these terms for readers can be highly detrimental for authors, even when delving into genres garnered towards adult audiences, making Pace’s success on Kindle Vella notable.

Pepper Pace and Audrey Carlan

Ever since the hard launch of Kindle Vella, the first and fifth place positions for the monthly top five favorited novels have stayed the same. Pace’s The Galatian Exchange has remained in fifth place for four consecutive months since January 2022. Her dedicated installment schedule and her personability through her reader engagement led her to this. The Marriage Auction by Audrey Carlan has remained in first thanks to Carlan’s pacing or, on Kindle Vella’s platform, low-cost installments.

While serialized stories are often accessible because they are generally affordable, Kindle Vella has made many readers feel as though they are being extorted by authors. This is one of the significant issues Pace has faced since the beginning, and it is most likely the reason she has not resin above fifth place. However, because of the platform’s emphasis on the author’s note and reader engagement, Pace has retained readership despite fluctuating prices due to word count. Since most users often don’t look for price explanations in publishing guidelines, as they are readers rather than publishers, Pace took it upon herself to explain. However, she only did so after much backlash in later chapters.

Alternatively, Carlan maintained her position arguably solely based on her accessibility. Though readers may complain about infrequent and short installments, Carlan seemingly follows a similar update schedule to Pace—updating twice about a week, negating such claims.

Knowing the main reasons why each author has achieved success, as well as what sets their levels of success apart, is key to understanding how to maintain success in self-publishing a serialized fiction in the digital age.

The Reality of Royalties

Royalty Fees and Writers

As an aspiring writer in the world of digital publishing, you may be wondering how royalty fees relate to your livelihood. Simple: royalties are how you get paid. According to The Bindery article “Royalties: How Do Publishers Pay Authors (Links to an external site.),” there are different types of royalties, the primary type being royalties known as a “list royalty” or a “retail royalty.”

Most publishers in general categories, especially New York publishers, pay authors royalties as a percentage of the retail price of the book, which is an example of list and retail royalties. However, there are many publishers who pay authors “royalties on net sales,” which means that they pay authors their royalty percentage after the discounts the publishers give to retail stores are figured in.

Side note: publishers sell books to bookstores for a range of discounts, sometimes up to half off the cover price or more.

What is a “Royalty”?

A royalty is defined by Investopedia as (Links to an external site.) “a legally-binding payment made to an individual, for the ongoing use of his or her originally-created assets, including copyrighted works, franchises, and natural resources.”

Royalties are written into contracts for musicians, artists, writers, and any other creator whose work is used by another source as a way of compensating the artist for their work.

Royalty payments comprise “a percentage of the gross or net revenues obtained from using the owner’s property.” In order to decide on these payments, a third party and a creator will lay out a “license agreement,” along with the limitations of the royalty, “such as its geographic limitations, the duration of the agreement, and the type of products with particular royalty cuts.”

According to The Balance Small Business (Links to an external site.),

There are a number of ways that franchisors establish what their ongoing royalty fee will be. The most common is a percentage of the Gross Sales that the franchisee earns. Typically this ranges from between five and nine percent. So, essentially, the franchisee is taking in 91-95% of their gross sales with the rest going to the franchisor.

This means that royalty fees are completely up to the franchisor’s discretion, depending on how high or low they wish to make it (although, typically, it’s less than 10%). To summarize, whenever a creator’s work is being used by the franchisors, like a song playing in the background of a commercial, the creator will be paid a set percentage of the income the franchisor makes from said advertisement (decided upon in a license agreement).

The payment of a royalty comes in the form of a “royalty check” – a check a creator gets for the use of their work. As RSG Media (Links to an external site.) states,

When you write a book, royalty check is the royalties earned from sale of every copy. When you compose a song, royalty is when someone performs it professionally or purchases your CD. You can also earn royalty from your land or property, if someone purchases your mineral rights. The amount of gas or oil produced will provide you a royalty. You can earn royalty checks annually, half-yearly or quarterly, depending upon the royalty agreement.

Royalty vs. License

Here’s where the importance of reading your contract comes into play as some confusion can occur concerning the difference between royalties and licenses. A license is defined by RSG Media (Links to an external site.) as “an agreement between two parties for using someone’s property without paying any money for it.” Whereas a royalty insinuates a payment for the use of the creator’s work, a license allows the third party to use the work without having to actually pay anything for it.

Licenses have what’s known as a licensing fee, which is “an amount of money paid by an individual or business to the licensor, which is mostly government, for enjoying the privilege of being licensed to use someone else property” for a set period of time.

The Licensor receives a perpetual/time bound payment as a percentage of sales in regards for using the intellectual property. You can take for example – an earning from copyright, patent on new products, and consumer product licensing more.
Royalties and licenses are members of same family; these terms are just two faces of same coin.

Know Your Contract

With any kind of contract, there is room for suspicious activity. When one party ignores the contract and goes outside the bounds of the licensing agreement, it’s up to the other party to decide whether to stay with the agreement and risk another breach of contract or terminate the license agreement altogether.

One such case involving a breach of a license agreement involves a toy creator and a line of baby toys. According to Markowitz Herbold PC (Links to an external site.),

A toy inventor sold his entire line of baby toy products to a large toy company in exchange for royalties on the future sales of his products. The royalty agreement, which spanned many years, contained separate royalty rates for different categories of toys, including a rate for toys that had already been commercialized by the inventor (“original toys”), and another rate for toys that were “derived from” these original toys.

Though the company paid royalty fees for the sales of a multitude of toys, the toy maker stated that it “misclassified toys” to keep from paying more fees. The toy maker then had to decide whether to sue for the previous grievances or terminate the contract entirely and try to get payment for the remainder of the agreement.

In the end, the toy maker ended the license agreement and “sued to recover the future royalties that he would have earned under the royalty agreement if the toy company had not breached the agreement.”

It is always important to understand the terms of ending a licensing agreement.

If the terminating party revokes the licensee’s right to use its intellectual property, the licensee may have to pull products off shelves. If the licensor’s initial termination was not justified, the licensor may be held responsible for the licensee’s damages. In the inventor’s case, the toy company counter-sued for breach of contract, in part based on what it claimed was the inventor’s improper termination of the contract.

The result of early termination is usually laid out in the license agreement as a “royalty agreement’s termination provision standards.”

As a new writer, it can be intimidating trying to understand contracts saturated in unfamiliar legal jargon, especially when your focus is sharing your work with the world. However, understanding the contract is of the highest importance when making sure you are getting your full rights as a creator.

The biggest lesson a writer can gain from this article is to find a good editor/manager to help and ALWAYS READ YOUR CONTRACT. Then, maybe you can one day watch Jon Snow quote your poem in a car commercial or hear your song playing in the aisles of Target as you buy caramel popcorn.

With a proper understanding of your contract and the ability to write something worth selling, the world is at your fingertips and the royalties will be in your pocket.

Is Kindle worth it for Authors?

Authors who have preferred traditional print publication in the past are now turning to digital publishing to catapult their careers. Kindle publishing is the pathway for allowing authors expansion with their audience and more control over their books. New authors and established authors are using Kindle to break through the barriers that traditional publishing places their authors.

Benefits of using Kindle Publishing

According to Benefits of Kindle Publishing for New Authors , “Through the Kindle publishing system, you can sell your eBooks on Amazon’s websites around the world, and you can earn up to 70% per sale! There are some basic requirements to achieve the 70% payouts, such as a minimum price of $2.99”. Kindle publishing is giving authors the potential of having a massive audience worldwide.

The pros & cons of Traditional Publishingexplains, “Writers can face dozens, even hundreds of rejections from both agents and publishing houses before their book makes to print”. Authors that use traditional publishing lose more than they gain. Through traditional publishing, an author is not able to easily make changes to their books because they have to go through editors and publishers. Authors lose their creativity control when it comes to their craft. Publishing houses have the final say in the book’s title, cover, and pricing. However, this leaves authors at the mercy of the publishing houses powers.

Meanwhile, authors who use Kindle publishing have the advantage of quickly making adjustments. Creators that use Kindle have more authority and creative control over their books. Authors can make changes to their book quickly and efficiently. Kindle can also update the price of preexisting e-books in the market.

Feedback for Authors

Kindle allows authors to get direct feedback from their audience. The readers can leave comments about how they felt about the book. Many readers do not suppress their feelings on the changes they think the author should make or their writing style. The feedback from readers will show the author if they are targeting the right genre or audience. An author’s primary focus is to appeal to their audience, and if they are not, then their failing.

Kindle Authors

John Locke is the eighth independent author to sell a million on the Kindle book store. He saw Kindle publishing as a platform for authors who were not given a chance to show their work to the world. According to John Locke Becomes the First Independently Published Author to Join the “Kindle Million Club” ,

“Kindle Direct Publishing has provided an opportunity for independent authors to compete on a level playing field with the giants of the bookselling industry,” said John Locke. “Not only did KDP give me a chance, but they also helped at every turn. Quite simply, KDP is the greatest friend an author can have.”

Locke struggled to sell his books early in his career, but as he began to promote his book through twitter and other cites, consistently his sells began to pick grow. As a result, he has had multiple bestsellers as his career progresses.

Amanda Hocking’s is the 26 –years-old “Kindle Millionaire” who sold over a million electronic copies of her self-published paranormal romance book. Multiple agents and publishing companies had denied Hockings, but Kindle publishing became the way she could achieve her dreams. According to Steven Spatz’s “Amanda Hocking Made Millions By Selling 99-cent Books — And You Can, Too,

“Hocking had written a series of novels over the preceding nine years, each of which had been rejected by countless agents and publishing houses. She decided, sitting in her apartment, to put them up for sale on Amazon. She listed the first at 99 cents.”(Writing Cooperative ).

Through Kindle, she has been able to make a living out of her writing. She has been able to call all the shots. Hocking has created a stable career for herself without having to spend as much money as traditional writers.

The authors who choose to use Kindle publishing have more advantages of getting more money and opportunities through their writings. Kindle publishing has become the pathway for established and new authors to have the chance of becoming a bestseller without an agent or traditional publishing company.

Publishing and Licensing Through Creative Commons

Publishing through Creative Commons is a quick, free, and easy way to license your online content. This guide will explain how to license your material through Creative Commons and offer a brief explanation of what the different options mean for your work.

Navigating the Website and Finding the Licensing Section

The First step to licensing your material under Creative Commons is to navigate to the ‘Share your work’ page. You may find this link on the home page of the Creative Commons website.

Once you have navigated to the ‘Share your work page,’ the website will present you with two sections. The first section is to choose a license. The second section expresses that you may share your work on a platform that allows Creative Commons licenses.

If you plan on licensing through Creative Commons and sharing your content on a platform, please refer to the desired platform’s help resources to better understand their individual process and stipulations. Platforms that allow their users to publish under a Creative Commons license include, but are not limited to, YouTube and Flickr.

Choosing and Using a License

After navigating to the ‘Share your work’ page, click on the ‘get started’ button under ‘choose a license.’ This page will then prompt you with two questions and an optional ‘help others attribute you’ section. Once you have answered each question, the website will give you a copy-paste link to add to your work.

The first question deals with whether you want your work to be modifiable and to have such adaptations shared. It is important to note that no matter which option you choose, people who use your work must attribute you as the person whose work they have modified.

If you select ‘no,’ then people may use your work in any manner they want, but they may not distribute their own works based on your content. If you want your original content to be unmodified and ascribed to only you, but don’t mind people distributing, sharing, and performing your work at will, then select ‘no.’

If you select ‘yes, as long as other’s share alike,’ then others may use your work, modify it, and distribute it; however, they must also license their creation under a ‘share alike’ license. If you believe that all content should be shared freely at all times and want any derivatives of your work to be licensed under a similar consideration, then select, ‘yes, as long as other’s share alike.’

If you select ‘yes,’ this is different from the previous option in one significant way. They may take your work, modify it, and distribute it without also licensing under a ‘share alike’ clause. If you believe that all content should be shared and used freely to the extent that others may take your work and not place it under a share alike license, then select ‘yes.’ This does not mean people may use your work, and its derivatives, for commercial uses. The second question concerns commercial use.

The second question deals with whether you want to allow people to use your content, and derivatives of it, for commercial use.

If you select yes, then people may use your work for commercial use. If you select no, then people may share, use, or distribute your work according to your selection from question 1 but may not use it for commercial use.

After answering these two questions, and before filling out the optional third field, you will now be presented with the license that suits your needs. The website will also present you with a link that will explain, in detail, the license it has given you.

The third section, ‘help others attribute you,’ has 7 fields for you to fill out. This section helps modify the license it presents you with to include machine readable metadata for your content. This will not only help others attribute your work, but also assists others in finding your work.

While you may fill out as many, or as few fields as possible, the ‘license mark’ section is necessary for how you want your work to be published.

For example, if your content is published on a web-page, such as a blog, then you will need to select ‘HTML + RDFa. This option will give you code, presented in the final section, which you will then copy and paste into your web-page’s structure. This will then present the viewer with your license at the bottom of the page as well as include machine-readable metadata in your web-page as well.

However, if your content is meant to be distributed offline then you will want to select ‘offline.’ This presents you with a line of text that states what license the work is under along with the URL to the details about that particular license. This allows the document to be distributed under the license without the use of the internet; for example, a word document you print out or e-mail to a friend. To include this license, just copy and paste the text into your document as-is.

The final option is ‘XMP.’ This option gives you a downloadable version of the license to include in your compatible files.

Once you have included the code, the text, or the xmp in your content, your work is now under your selected Creative Commons license. It is important to note that your work is immediately licensed once you include that text, code, or xmp.

This means that anyone who obtains that content with that license attached to it now has that content, under that particular license, for as long as it is valid. You may remove the license from your work and distribute the content without the license whenever you want. However, anyone that has obtained your content with that license, still has the rights to it as specified under the license they obtained it under.

If you have any other questions and concerns, the Creative Common’s website has an extensive Frequently Asked Questions web page that will prove helpful.

From Traditional publishing to Digital Publishing for Authors

As a result of the emergence of digital publishing, today’s writers have had to find a way to expand their brands not only through printed publications, but also through the internet. As consumers have started to use iPads, e-readers, and phones for reading, primarily due to an easier access to a wider variety of works, there have been some writers who have chosen to use digital publishing in order gain more freedom, money, and readers globally.

While there are authors who prefer traditional print publication because they feel that digital takes away from the reader, others have ventured out into using e-books as a part of digital publishing in order to connect to a wider audience. According to Joanna Penn’s article “10 Reasons Why Authors Love E-books,”authors have been gravitating towards e-books due to the growth in sales – the idea being that if the sales of e-books are rising, then so are the number of readers.

Penn points out that e-book readers buy more books as well. She states that as an e-book user, she now reads three times more books than before she became an e-book reader. (For more on Penn’s article, visit her website here).

In fact, e-book prices are one of the primary factors that draws in the attention of authors and readers. When the consumers see cheaper books, they feel as though they are getting a deal based on the price of the same book in print.

Authors such as Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler have also found interest in the pricing differences when dealing with digital publishing compared to print publication. The possibility of gaining more money was an eye opener to many authors who were only using traditional publishing.

For example, Eisler began publishing e-books to expand his audience globally, bringing him more sales on his books. In Jason Pinter’s article “Barry Eisler Explains Self-Publishing Decision,” Eisler explains his motives for going into self publishing using digital, stating that

If I don’t earn out the legacy contract, the only money I’ll ever see from it is $142,000 per year for three years. Even if I do earn out, I’ll only see 14.9% of each digital sale thereafter. But once I beat the contract in digital, even if it takes longer than three years, I go on earning 70% of each digital sale forever thereafter. And, as my friend Joe Konrath likes to point out, forever is a long time (The Daily Beast).

Eisler saw the possibility of more money from the digital sales even if he had to lower the prices for his novels in the beginning, realizing that, with time, he would be able to gradually up the price of his works.

E-books have also drawn authors into the digital world through self-publishing, where authors are given more control than they would have with traditional publishing. For instance, Amanda Hockings made over a million dollars using digital publishing. She started off small, selling her book for only 99 cents – until she sold over a million books.

According to Steven Spatz’s “Amanda Hocking Made Millions By Selling 99-cent Books — And You Can, Too,”

Her success is a product of hard work, great writing, and smart decision making… one of the best things about being a self-published author is you get to call the shots. That includes establishing the most appropriate price point for your books, along with shaping your larger strategy for obtaining readers. You’re not beholden to the logic or corporate limitations of large publishing houses (Writing Cooperative).

Having previously been denied by publishing companies and agents, Hockings took matters into her own hands. She turned to digital publishing, which allowed her to slowly but surely build her audience as she wrote more novels.

While Hocking books were sold as e-books for 99 cents, when she began to up her prices, consumers were willing to pay more as she had built a stable and interested audience base. Digital publishing gave her a way to share her novels with readers around the world when other publishers and agents rejected her.

Unlike traditional publishing, digital publishing has allowed authors to be able to be the authority in all aspects of their books, with e-books providing the opportunity for authors to publish digitally without the need for a publisher and agents.

As digital publishing progresses, it will create a bigger platform for other writers who would not otherwise have a chance. Due to its marketability, digital publishing is also cheap for writers to use. Overall, the authors who use this method gain the advantage of getting more money and opportunities with their writings, and authors who have been accustomed to using the traditional publishing have seen the advantages that comes with digital publishing and may begin to follow suit.

Overall, digital publishing has created a pathway for many known (and unknown) authors to advance in their careers and share their works with a wider audience.